Gail Marsella: Homebody

Fri, 10 Oct 2003 23:15:29 GMT

Super Science Fair Projects
http://www.super-science-fair-projects.com/
The most useful thing about this site is the process it demonstrates, with a timeline, a project log, a step-by-step outline, a discussion of scientific method, and a feature on how judges think.

[Neat New Stuff]

Fri, 10 Oct 2003 00:01:29 GMT

Still a good bargain - $.25 a song...

EMusic buyer to kill off unlimited download offer. Puts limits on subscriptions [The Register]

Fri, 10 Oct 2003 00:00:38 GMT

~~~~~~~~~SPEAKING OF BABIES...Traditional Japanese .... ~~~~~~~~~

SPEAKING OF BABIES...

Traditional Japanese baby slings are better than baby carriages and framed baby carriers, for lots of mama/baby/economy/ecology reasons. In Spain, we used one we made out of an old furoshiki. I used to see baby slings all the time in Japan, years ago, but they faded away as too old fashioned. Now they're making a comeback, as do all things born of pure wisdom. Here's a good place to get them. [Pure Land Mountain]

Wed, 08 Oct 2003 09:47:12 GMT

Get a load of this report from Reuters...I was just howling...

German women fed up with their partners' grumbling on weekend shopping trips can now dump them at a special kindergarten for men offering beer and entertainment.

"The women are issued a receipt for their partners when they hand them in and can pick them up again when they return to us later," Alexander Stein, manager of the 'Nox Bar' in the nothern city of Hamburg told Reuters today.

The men are given a name badge on arrival and for 10 Euros ($11.80) they get two beers, a hot meal, and televised football and games.

Read the full article at abcnews.com: Kids, Beer, and Football

{GM - Bone Lace}

Tue, 07 Oct 2003 22:57:34 GMT

Watched a special on the Ovation network last night on the Roman Coliseum and the events that (probably, based on historic evidence of various kinds) took place there. Struck by the correlation with video games, which are so similar in gore and escalating violence, and so dissimilar in that nothing living or breathing actually dies. I have asked my gamer son many times why shooters are even considered entertainment - and no, I'm not one of the nuts who thinks exposure to fake violence causes people to be violent - but he can't articulate an answer. At least we've progressed to fake vs real in such matters. (Does that mean that reality TV shows are a step backward because real people get hurt?)

Wed, 01 Oct 2003 00:11:10 GMT

Extending PDAs to the Visually Impaired.

Pocket PCs for the Blind

"A line of Pocket PCs for the blind from Freedom Scientific that completely lack screens; instead they have full keyboards and special 20 or 40 cell Braille matrices for 'displaying' information. [Via PocketPCThoughts]" [Gizmodo]

Libraries will need to follow this development in part because we need to make sure our web sites and online services work with these devices.
[The Shifted Librarian]

Fri, 26 Sep 2003 00:24:12 GMT

Mighty Brew for the Do-It-Yourselfer. How long does it take to find an Internet site that would satisfy a yearning for a cup of dark, strong coffee so assertive that it risks assault charges? By Michelle Slatalla. [New York Times: Technology]

Thu, 25 Sep 2003 09:21:01 GMT

Science Toys You Can Make With Your Kids.

Science Toys You Can Make With Your Kids. Best amateur science source [Recomendo]

Another treat from Kevin Kelly's Recomendo site.
[McGee's Musings]

Tue, 23 Sep 2003 06:00:02 GMT

Smoked url in Oakland's Chinatown..

There is something delightful about living in a time where little corner bakeries in Oakland's Chinatown have web site address printed on their street awnings. How else would I have known that Sum Yee Pastry delivers DimSumOnline?

Q. If American Jews go out for Chinese food on Christmas, where do Chinese Americans go on Rosh Hashana?
[a klog apart]

[a klog apart]

Sat, 20 Sep 2003 12:03:46 GMT

~~~~~~~~~Today is Keirou no Hi, or Respect-for-the .... ~~~~~~~~~

Today is Keirou no Hi, or Respect-for-the-Aged Day in Japan, so rather than interrupt my intense physical and mental activity to celebrate my categorical decrepitude, I thought I'd just post this again from the archives.

ELDERHOOD

All this folderol about youth being the peak and elderhood being the pits, I mean even Yeats ("But oh that I were young again...."; "a tattered coat upon a stick..."), that dissimulating fogy; he wrote his best stuff when he was eighty. I say it's a lot of youth-media-generated horsefeathers. I've been young and I'm becoming elder, and I'll take elder any day of the maturely ejaculating week.

Like all else that grows, life gets where it's going in stages, so youth is not yet life, since the youth has never been any older. Elderhood, by contrast, is very definitely life, for the elder has indeed been young, and what's more has survived and grown thence, and is cored with the experience. Only the span of both ages in one individual comprises what can truly be called a life.

So when the young say 'get a life,' this is what they really mean, despite themselves: they mean get like the elders; they mean GET ENTIRE. They don't know this of course, for in youth nowadays it seems the gardens of the spirit often yield little more than a few stunted facts amid a weedy tangle of ideas randomly received from sources only the inexperienced would patronize, such as age-segregated schools, Hollywood, television, video games and other kids. So forget it if you're looking for major revelations in that quarter.

I'm not talking book smarts or street smarts or any of those five-and-dime kind of smarts anybody can get if they can breathe long enough; I'm talking SMARTS, all gilded bold caps, as conferred only by time deeply spent. And I don't mean in meditation. I mean in ACTIVE QUEST. That too is gilded bold caps, but this time generously embellished with precious stones, mainly emeralds and rubies, because diamonds are way overrated, as any multifaceted elder knows.

Anyway, that's why genuine elders aren't enticed by the culture of youth: because they see right through it, how short-lived and time-blind it necessarily is. They know the portals one must pass through to get beyond that stage of life and, if one is truly alive and not asleep or otherwise spiritually sightless or habituated, the lessons that await and must be learned at each stage. That, in its totality, is life; it is not life if one somnambulates through the whole thing, or tries to stay young forever, or mature quickly. A life thus true is all the more a life the closer it approaches its entirety.

And in contrast, as there is the closed and therefore dead youth, who has learned nothing at all from his few years trapped within the senses, so there is the closed and therefore dead elder, who has sprung unchanged from said youth. The latter, though, is the greater tragedy, for the point of life is that toward which we age: toward becoming a living cornucopia of worthy experiences, toward becoming wise at the cost and the pace that wisdom requires, toward acquiring, gestating and dispensing that wisdom, at its pace and in its place, to the experientially challenged young, who, were it not for the wisdom of those in full elderhood, would rush pell-mell here and there doing even more to kill the time they have in excess and make days play dead so they don't have to live them exactly, more like zombie through them in a stylish pattern that can tend to remain for the rest of the life, until one day they wake up in maybe the suburbs or maybe a shooting gallery and wonder how they got to a place where there's nowhere else, and now are too old for youth and too unlived for elderhood; and when youth is not young and old is not elder, that is the end of the world.

And to hell with Swift, who said: "Every man desires to live long, but no man would be old." I for one can't wait to start using a cane. Somebody has to get the world going the way it should; who better than the experientially advantaged? [Pure Land Mountain]

Fri, 19 Sep 2003 09:01:01 GMT

About Herbs, Botanicals & Other Products [Sloan-Kettering] http://www.mskcc.org/mskcc/html/11570.cfm
The respected cancer institute provides "objective information for oncologists and healthcare professionals, including a clinical summary for each agent and details about constituents, adverse effects, interactions, and potential benefits or problems. Evaluations of alternative or unproved cancer therapies also are given."

[Neat New Stuff]

Sun, 14 Sep 2003 14:41:24 GMT

Here's a roundup of pay-for-play music sites on the Web, from CNET. I dispute their "Fair" rating for eMusic (I would have put it at "Very Good"), but then I'm pretty clearly focused on independent labels and classics from the jazz area. {GM-Bone Lace}

Fri, 05 Sep 2003 21:22:24 GMT

Bravo! May I also suggest eMusic.com, where you can find thousands of classic older pieces as well as new recordings by artists smart enough to control their own creations.

Links to Tens of Thousands of Legal Music Downloads. You don't need to worry about getting sued by the Recording Industry Assocation of America or arrested by the FBI if you download legal music. Many independent and unsigned musicians offer downloads of their music in hopes of attracting more fans. Here's some music from my friends The Divine Maggees, Oliver Brown and Rick Walker's Loop.pooL. If everyone started downloading legal music instead of violating copyright with the file sharing programs, we would make short work of the RIAA, because people would start buying CDs directly from the artists and seeing their shows instead of enriching the major labels by buying CDs from the bands the labels have chosen for us to listen to. The RIAA would also have no cause to complain - these music downloads do not infringe copyright because the artists give you permission to download them. [kuro5hin.org]

Thu, 04 Sep 2003 23:46:52 GMT

Whipping Up Supper, Mouse in Hand. Many people have written off online groceries after a few spectacular failures, but a new crop of Web grocers flourish in a niche market. By Michelle Slatalla. [New York Times: Technology]

Tue, 02 Sep 2003 00:48:19 GMT

I have just sent my son off to college (software engineering). I sent our daughter off a couple years ago (television and theatre arts management), but somehow since I still had two at home that wasn't cataclysmic. This is.

One left. A little one, to be sure, (daughter, 10 years old), but I really have to find something to make my life - for decades; the women in my family live to advanced ages - meaningful behond the grave.

Work isn't it. (I have an advanced degree in chemistry and a collection of interesting jobs - they're not it. The children will make their own mark, but that's only partially due to me.) Hobbies aren't it, unless they serve some social purpose. What should I do?

Fri, 29 Aug 2003 19:27:20 GMT

A Passion for Jazz
http://www.apassion4jazz.net/
Includes a little of everything -- jazz history, a timeline, festivals, a photo gallery, a teacher locator, a glossary, and more.

[Neat New Stuff]

Mon, 25 Aug 2003 10:25:29 GMT

happy sunday tune. There's something about Mo Jones that makes my smile when I hear their tunes. These guys are from holland, recorded theor album in their attic on Pro-Tools and recently kicked ass at the North Sea Jazz Festival. If you're using an enclosure aware aggregator, you'll automagically receive the mp3 of How The Wind Blows. [Adam Curry: Adam Curry's Weblog]

Fri, 15 Aug 2003 23:43:27 GMT

Ice Cream of the Republic. Found Thomas Jefferson's recipe for vanilla ice cream while searching for a frozen custard recipe. D [More Like This WebLog]

Fri, 15 Aug 2003 23:39:53 GMT

Sand Castle Central - Sand Sculpture Tips, Tricks and Pics
http://www.sandcastlecentral.com/
"your on-line source for all things sand sculpture, including free tips for beginners, information on the best sand carving tools, updated contest and master sculptor information, related links and lots of photos."

[Neat New Stuff]

Wed, 13 Aug 2003 10:16:11 GMT

Google now has a built-in calculator. Coool. How about a built-in dishwasher? [Scripting News]

Sun, 10 Aug 2003 20:21:27 GMT

Scrapbook Preservation Society. Digital scrapbooking is booming within the boom. The interplay of paper vs. transimission presentation is being debated here as in the larger context of print vs. screen publication...but the priority of the heritage role and assured preservation are, at least nominally, in the foreground. Scrapbook Preservation Society provides very informative information on the materials for traditional paper based compiling...but has not bridged into permanence issues of computer output or archiving of digital media. There is an excellent Terminology. [future of the book news]

Sun, 10 Aug 2003 20:21:02 GMT

(more). "Scrapbooking is booming. Scrapbooking is a new consumer passion that is just emerging on the horizon. With a sales jump of 29% in 2002, scrapbooking is the fastest growing segment in the stationery market with $1.2 billion in consumer sales." (more) [future of the book news]

Fri, 08 Aug 2003 21:42:45 GMT

What I want to know is when they're going to show up in my small city...

Food Shopping in the Fastest Lane. The founder of FreshDirect, the hot online grocery, believes he has found a way to satisfy a city's passion for good food minus the drudgery of actually shopping for it. By Jennifer Steinhauer. [New York Times: Technology]

Sat, 02 Aug 2003 10:58:49 GMT

AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety Senior Driver Website
http://seniordrivers.org/home/toppage.cfm
A.K.A. SeniorDrivers.org, this site offers tips to keep your driving skills sharp, as well as state by state listings of available transportation programs for seniors

[Neat New Stuff]

Fri, 25 Jul 2003 21:45:30 GMT

Well, we did it. Moved the folks into a retirement home. Thank God for siblings, several of them. I'm still as limp as a rag, but we did just about everything, including paperwork. Anyone who's interested in a to-do list for a similar situation, let me know and I'll compile one for public consumption. {GM - Bone Lace}